NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER ONE
OF TIME S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE A ruthlessly honest emotionally charged and utterly
original exploration of Asian American consciousness Brilliant . . . To read this book is to
become more human. Claudia Rankine author of Citizen In development as a television series
starring and adapted by Greta Lee One of Time s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year Named One
of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times The Washington Post NPR New Statesman
BuzzFeed Esquire The New York Public Library and Book Riot Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong
fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir cultural criticism and history to expose fresh
truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism this
collection is vulnerable humorous and provocative and its relentless and riveting pursuit of
vital questions around family and friendship art and politics identity and individuality
will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong s theory
of minor feelings. As the daughter of Korean immigrants Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in
shame suspicion and melancholy. She would later understand that these minor feelings occur
when American optimism contradicts your own reality when you believe the lies you re told about
your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small they re dissonant and in their tension
Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet s searching mind
Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in
America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English
language to shame and depression to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of
art Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche and of a writer s search to
both uncover and speak the truth. Praise for Minor Feelings Hong begins her new book of essays
with a bang. . . .The essays wander a variegated terrain of memoir criticism and polemic
oscillating between smooth proclamations of certainty and twitches of self-doubt. . . . Minor
Feelings is studded with moments [of] candor and dark humor shot through with glittering
self-awareness. The New York Times Hong uses her own experiences as a jumping off point to
examine race and emotion in the United States. Newsweek Powerful . . . [Hong] brings together
memoiristic personal essay and reflection historical accounts and modern reporting and other
works of art and writing in order to amplify a multitude of voices and capture Asian America
as a collection of contradictions. She does so with sharp wit and radical transparency. Salon
